Web — on No Turn On Red | Blogging about the retail industry, e-commerce development, social media, and how to craft a better shopping experience for your customers.

Kohl’s launches online-only deals; Why aren’t they using Twitter?

Wednesday

November 5, 2008

1 Comment

Last week, Kohl’s discussed some of their holiday marketing strategies with the press. They plan on increasing their spending to capture a larger share of the dwindling holiday sales figures, with increased emphasis on direct mail, e-mail campaigns, and online-only sale prices.

Going into the holiday season, the retailer, which has seen Web sales increase by more than 50% so far this year, is making a big push online as well. It plans to send email blasts out to 15 million shoppers — more than double the number that it had on its electronic mailing list last year — and it’s offering one or two specially discounted items on Kohls.com every day through Christmas.

Their website has started advertising these online-only specials on their homepage, with a callout that went live this week (apparently):

This is a very interesting shift in marketing for the retailer that has, until now, always offered consistent pricing in-store and online. Their marketing campaigns even advertised this fact and, for years, coupons that were sent out to customers, in direct mail, were also good online.

Kohl’s needs to be aggressive in order to increase their market share this holiday season. This is a perfect opportunity for the retailer to utilize a service, like Twitter, to advertise these special, limited-time promotions. It is obvious that they want to aggressively promote these deals as they they are utilizing prime screen real estate to push the deal. It even appears that they already have a Twitter account, although with zero posts. They should be using this to promote the daily deals and reach more people, one-on-one.

The usage of the service would be simply – they’d just need to follow the example that other retailers have set to announce daily deals. I look at the Amazon MP3 Deal of the Day and Woot.com as two examples of retailers using the service to effectively promote daily deals.

Maybe the first step, for a retailer like Kohl’s, is the use the service to promote daily deals and then they can evolve into using the service to engage customers in conversation. I think there is always more room for retailers to use Twitter to reach their customers.

What do you think?

Read more about: e-commerce, holiday, Kohl's, promotions, retail industry, sales, Social Media, twitter, Web

Handbag Planet Using Social Media to Launch Retail Store

Found in: Branding, Effective Use Of, Tips for Using, Twitter, Use of Social Media

Tuesday

October 14, 2008

2 Comments

Handbag Planet is a new store that is launching tomorrow and they are using social media to promote their site launch. They’re giving away 24 handbags over the course of the launch day and entries to the contest are gained through posting about the site to blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks.

The contest and social media campaign must be working as word of mouth seems to be strong on various networks. A search on Twitter returns 6 pages of results while a Google blog search returns close to 3,000 mentions. I’d assume that the positive word of mouth could lead into positive first day sales. If they also offer good customer service and a strong product, they can hopefully convert some of the first day customers into repeat customers.

I’m very interested to see how this plays out, how the website looks, and how their long term prospects look. I’ll sure be looking at the site tomorrow to check it out and, of course, with this blog post I wil hpefully win my fiancee a new handbag. It’s a win-win for all of us.

Read more about: ecommerce, facebok, handbag planet, myspace, retail launch, Social Media, twitter, Web

Hot Topic, lifestyle marketing, and integrating store and web design

Found in: Branding, Industry News

Tuesday

June 12, 2007

Comments Off

One of my local malls, the Monmouth Mall in Eatontown NJ, recently has seen a number of retailers relocate and remodel their stores: Victoria Secret, The Limited, Express, New York and Company, and Hot Topic. Add in the conversion of a Rampage to Forever 21 and new stores being built (Charlotte Russe, Hollister, and Modell’s), the mall is generating excitement with their newness.

The Hot Topic remodel interested me. It’s been 10 years since they opened in their spot that they were in. The new store has better lighting, better merchandise presentation, more excitement, and it is more inviting to shop in.

Not only did they remodel this store, but this is one of the first 10 percent of Hot Topic stores to get the new, reworked layout.

Hot Topic’s dark Goth stores, which were once a huge hit with rebellious teen shoppers, are getting a lighter, brighter makeover as the retailer struggles to pull sales out of a deep hole, the company’s chief financial officer said Wednesday.

“Based on feedback from our customers and changes in the [apparel] industry, we’re changing the look of our stores,” James McGinty told a gathering of analysts at the Piper Jaffray Annual Consumer Conference in New York.

“People were telling us that the stores were too dark, gothic and intimidating to the average customer,” McGinty said.

(More from CNN/Money.)

Over at Lightheavyweight, Finn is talking about talking about how this new layout ties in with lifestyle marketing. To really capture your marketshare, as a lifestyle marketer, you have to evolve with your clients and adapt through the times.

One can create a great shopping experience and display merchandise well, but if it doesn’t connect with the customers, there will be no business. The challenge with lifestyle marketing is not only to create an exciting shopping experience, but to create one that connects. As Finn discusses, I think Hot Topic has done this.

This new layout is a fresh look for the retailer and a needed change. Adapting as the marketplace grows is not only good business, but it is something the retailer needed to do. The last 12 months have not been kind to them:

What I also like is how well their new website design ties in to the new store concept. Brighter colors, better navigation, better presentation of merchandise. Not only does the new site work well and look nice, but it’s a direct reflection of the thoughts that drove the new store layout. This is a great integrated effort to create a cohesive shopping experience across all mediums. This is something that not very many retailers get right and Hot Topic did.

It will take a while to get this concept off of the ground and really reinvigorate the business, but the seeds of growth and change are there for the long run. Watch out for Hot Topic (again).